A Changing Lives Through Literature Blog

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We know that literature, as the CLTL acronym states, changes lives. We know that reading a book has the power to transform the reader’s thought process, to strengthen empathy through traversing the minds of different characters, and to allow for readers to wholeheartedly and unabashedly relate to the stories on the pages they hold.

However, none of this would be possible were it not for the processes that produce literature in the first place.

Recently, I have been afforded the exciting opportunity to partner up with a writer who is currently working on a novel that is set to be published some time in 2017. The book details the experience of growing up in New Bedford, Massachusetts, and deals with themes of family, betrayal, loss, and all the other positives and negatives that build up to the grand, overall moment in time that we call a singular lifetime.

However, this book is considered to be a fictional memoir, since the writer is embellishing the story of her own life to make it more suitable and dramatic for reading. One of the main differences between actual life and life recorded down onto paper is that writing can be edited. Writing can skip the boring parts of a person’s day and go straight to the fun stuff, highlighting and often times liberally adding to the moments people would want to read about. So, despite the undeniable fact that literature changes lives, capturing lives through literature is often a far less factual process.

At its current stage, this book still has no binding, no jacket, and no cover. Instead, it is merely a large stack of 230 sheets of printer paper that take up an awful lot of space in my backpack.

Still, it’s strange to think that this is where literature starts. At one point in time, the greatest book you’ve ever read has been nothing more than a stack of paper in an intern’s bag, the corners of the pages crinkled and bent while the words themselves are scrawled over with red pen. In this particular instance, I just happen to be that very intern, and the markings in red belong to one of the many editors I am working with.

Reviewing the process of creating literature is honestly a sobering glimpse into how everything that has ever been considered “great” has to have come from humble beginnings. The writer who is determined to chronicle her experiences in New Bedford once had a mere inkling of an idea, but now she has over 200 pages and a secured publishing deal.

The smallest of concepts always have the potential to blossom into something more, but these ideas can only grow if given the proper care. The entirety of the literary canon that stands to this day, from a stack of papers in 2016 to Lady Murasaki’s The Tale of Genji (the first novel ever written) in the 11th century, was once only a thought in a writer’s head, but now these stories have leaped from thought to paper to literature, where we as readers can experience these messages for ourselves.

To make a contribution to this blog, please contact me either through my UMass email or through my Twitter. Hope to hear from you!

Hello there! For quite some time, this blog has been essentially inactive, and although this particular site played only a small role in the overall Changing Lives Through Literature program, it would be a true shame to let Changing Lives, Changing Minds disappear into the recesses of the abandoned Internet.

Therefore, in the following weeks, this blog will be experiencing a revival.

Because Changing Lives, Changing Minds has been on hold for so long, bringing this blog back to life will be a tricky challenge, and the task has fallen unto me, the new blog editor, to see this goal turn into a success.

My name is Rachel Wicks and over this past summer I was selected to be the new editor of Changing Lives, Changing Minds. I am currently a graduate student at UMass Dartmouth, enrolled in the Professional Writing Program, where I am hoping to cultivate the skills necessary to one day be employed as an editor in a publishing company.

I have a lot of experience with writing and editing, not only due to my time at UMass Dartmouth but also because of the different jobs I am balancing. Besides being an editing intern for Changing Lives Through Literature, I am also a tutor, the managing editor of my school’s newspaper, and I also have a second internship at a publishing company in New Bedford, called Spinner Publications.

However, in spite of my previous obligations, I fully intend to revitalize Changing Lives, Changing Minds and keep this blog updated with interesting articles that relate not only to how literature can affect someone’s life but also to how the CLTL program itself is helping other people. In the past, this blog has done well to cover the literary side of the program but has done little to incorporate themes regarding criminal justice.

My goal is to fix this deficiency and provide a wide array of articles that handle both of these topics, all the while editing the navigation, look, and feel of how this blog is designed. At the moment, my goal is to publish a new article every other Friday, but with dedication and a stroke of luck, I hope to have weekly updates from a variety of contributing writers from across the nation.

In the mean time, keep your eye out for some exciting changes, and I’ll see you in two weeks!

For information on how to contribute to this blog, please contact me either through my UMass email or through my Twitter. Hope to hear from you!

The following is a handout I provide for participants on the first meeting to help them think about literature and how the program runs. What they receive is the numbered items, and the text below each is usually what I explain as we go over the handout.

1. Learning is a building exercise, not a filling station.

The research increasingly shows that one’s approach to learning can be pivotal to their ability to learn. To this end, it’s important to understand that learning is something they can continue to do throughout their lives and that their mind is not necessarily finite. Basically, so long as they maintain a belief that they can learn, they will continue to learn.

I make this point first because we often carry the limited view in our heads about our learning abilities and I hope to help them break negative expectations about their ability to do well in this program and life in general.

2. Reading fiction further develops your empathy and understanding.

Reading is often the closest thing we have to being put into someone else’s mind or to learn another’s point of view. By immersing ourselves in fiction, it helps us to stretch our mind and understand the world around us. Emphasizing the importance of empathy, I go further and explain that it’s more than just a “feel-good” emotion to connect with other people. Being able to understand and connect with other humans allows us to make better decisions, as well as present ourselves better in situations .

3. All stories are 1 story.

This seems strange, but I’ve taken tips from Thomas Foster’s How To Read Literature Like a Professor. He says all literature is telling the same story, and that story is the human condition. At the cornerstone of every story is an author attempting to convey some truth or element about what it’s like to live in this world as a human—even (and especially) when the story has no humans in it. Therefore, if all stories are about the human condition, it makes it easier to understand why there is so much literature and why we can interweave all the readings in the program.

4. All stories are a mystery.

No matter the genre, all stories are a mystery. The mystery is determining where the author is leading the reader and why. I encourage participants to think about the stories in this way because just like an advertisement, the author is trying to sell us something. Instead of selling us products, they are selling us ideas and we want to be quite aware of what we are being sold. To do that, we have to be constantly reading and questioning the story.

This also comes from Foster and his discussion of intentionality in literature. I explain to the participants that nothing in a piece of literature is an accident. When bad things happen, they didn’t happen accidentally. The author chose it to happen, and in choosing things to happen, he or she is communicating something about the story’s purpose. Dying of heart disease is different from being crushed to death by a piano, which is different from being struck by lightning. Each might tell us something different about a character and his or her role in the story.

5. Anticipate the story.

I am constantly trying to guess what is going to happen next and I’m wrong at least 75% of the time. I tell the participants this so that they understand that the guessing game in literature often goes wrong, even for people well-versed in literature. Getting it right isn’t the goal—continuing to guess is. The guessing means that the reader is thinking, projecting, and ultimately, immersed in the story enough to want to think about where it is going. It means the reader will get more out of the story.

6. Read the Intro sheet.

For each reading, I provide an introductory sheet that identifies the author (often a picture too), publication information, trivia, some background about the author or writing, other good pieces by the author, and other authors that readers might enjoy if they liked this story. Most importantly though, I include an essential question. The question is vague enough that it doesn’t give away much about the plot, but specific enough that readers can have it in the back of their minds while they make their way through the story. It’s a useful way to prime focus and attention so readers get the most out of the story.

7. Re-Read the story. Always.

Our first encounters with stories are usually attempts to wrap our heads around the plot. If we want to get more (and for a program like this, getting more is beneficial), then re-reading is useful. It’s also good because we pick up things that we missed and it can help to clarify things that we were confused by.

8. Read aloud.

We are much better listeners than we are readers. In part, that’s because we have been listening more often and longer than we have been reading. Reading a text can be challenging in many ways but one way to make it easier is to read it aloud. This doesn’t mean standing up on a table and shouting it to the masses, but it can mean mouthing the words under breath. Hearing the words can help to make sense of them in a way that otherwise might be inaccessible.

Read in an accent

It sounds strange but in addition to reading aloud, it might be useful to read in an accent. Adding an accent (I often like English), can provide an element of tone that can provide additional meaning to the text that reading flatly might not produce. Furthermore, by adding an accent, it requires more attention and thus reinforces the content in a reader’s mind.

10. NARPH! Notate, Actively Read, Paraphrase, Highlight.

I often reiterate the importance of physically interacting with a text. Doing so makes the reader a more engaged reader and allows for the reading to stick longer in his or her head. Additionally, it means when the reader re-reads or comes to the meeting, he or she can more easily move through the reading with clear markings around things that are of interest or importance.

That’s my tip sheet for participants! What kinds of tips do you provide to your participants? What would you add from this list? What would you borrow?

Lance Eaton is an instructional designer at North Shore Community College, where he also teaches courses in American Literature, popular culture, and comics. He writes for several magazines and websites. He also serves as a social media consultant for several companies. His musings, reflections, and ramblings can be found at his blog. You can find out more about him on his website.

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With 2.4 million inmates, the United States has the highest prison population of the world. Behind only Seychelles, we also have the second highest incarceration rate. The United States makes up only five percent of the world’s population, yet we have twenty-five percent of the world’s prisoners. These are alarming statistics, but what do they really mean for our nation?

As a nation, we’re led to believe that people who break laws are bad and should be put behind bars. We never consider much past that– how long they should be in prison, where the money comes from, what happens to the prisoners after they’re released.

The sad fact about released prisoners is that the majority of them are incarcerated again. A study showed that 62.5% of released prisoners were convicted of another crime after being released from prison. Two-thirds of them committed another crime within just one year of their release.

What good is a prison sentence if an inmate is going to repeat the same actions upon release? You’ve only temporarily delayed new crimes from being committed. Shouldn’t our nation be aiming for a higher goal? Isn’t prevention what we should be targeting? The United States prison system is severely suffering when it comes to reforming inmates.

A prison sentence alone is not enough to keep a prisoner from committing future offenses. This fact is abundantly clear when juvenile detentions are taken into consideration. A study of Chicago youth incarceration showed that young offenders were sixty-seven percent more likely to be in jail again by the age of twenty-five. What’s even worse, is that they were more likely to commit violent crimes, including homicide.

On average, it costs twenty-four thousand dollars per inmate per year. Billions are spent on incarceration every year. The billions of dollars that go into keeping these prisons not full but overcrowded would be better spent on alternative sentencing programs.

Changing Lives Through Literature is an excellent example of a program that truly works. A study showed that less than fifty percent of graduates committed a new offense after completing the program. Why is this program so more effective than incarceration alone? Students in the program are are learning hands-on in the classroom, gaining the tools necessary to reevaluate their decisions and change their perspectives.

Locking away everyone who breaks the law is not only not possible, but also not feasible. We need to recognize the issues associated with the prison system, and just as the Changing Lives Through Literature students learn to change their perspectives, we need to as well. Alternative sentencing programs overall produce better results than prison sentences and are often less expensive. This is the direction we need to head towards, instead of relying on prison sentences.

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Literary expression takes many forms; from short stories to expanded documentation covering myriad subjects. Throughout history, authors have set themselves apart offering written works as diverse as romantic novels and epic tales of adventure, spanning several volumes. Within each genre, sub-specialists write in styles running the gamut from concise academic form, to sprawling embellishments of everyday encounters. Thanks to technology and the proliferation of the World Wide Web, there is a relatively new player on the field, begging the question: Are bloggers a threat to literary integrity?

Motivation Dictates Value

Before people had pencils and pens, drawings and symbols left on cave walls were effective communication. So who took responsibility for preserving thoughts in this way? The cave people skilled at drawing most likely bore much of the burden, but lesser illustrators surely weighed in too. As communication became more important to society, formalizing language and alphabets, more and more people took up writing as a form of expression. Early writers were not necessarily highly-skilled. But they wrote anyway, because they could. So the slippery slope of unskilled writers sharing ideas, whether or not they have the slightest clue how to do it properly, is nothing new.

It could even be argued that the same motivation existed for cave drawers as for some of today’s bloggers. Fame and recognition, the desire to be heard and remembered, are motivators for taking pens to paper, charcoal to cave walls, and most recently, fingertips to keyboards. What has changed over time is the relative importance of fame, heightened in an information age placing great emphasis on celebrity and adulation.

The evolution of the World Wide Web continues to change the landscape for fame-seekers. An instant audience, perhaps millions, is a powerful draw for those committed to being noticed. As a result, many bloggers put the cart before the horse; adding to the blogosphere, before they really have something to say. Blogging’s greatest threat to quality writing is found among ‘vanity’ blogs, serving only their authors; rather than informative, relevant content shared by capable writers blogging online.

Blog Economics

In addition to personal rewards for bloggers, the practice of sharing online carries cash benefits, once bloggers establish followings. Unfortunately, poorly written blogs yield returns for bloggers able to draw traffic, in spite of themselves. When poor content is rewarded with cash, it might appear as though it undermines quality writing, but it may be too soon to judge.

Blogging is an evolving pursuit, subject to corrections as it matures into a long-term phenomenon. And just as competition influences other economic trends, bloggers face free market influences, which may eventually serve to elevate good writing and take incentives away from bloggers spewing drivel.

Purely promotional blog content, disguised as education, is increasingly being called-out for what it is, filtering-out blogs without intrinsic value. Spam gives blogs a bad name, but it also makes legitimate content shine amid the noise. In other words, bloggers with something meaningful to share will prevail, but only with a firm commitment to high quality content, and perseverance sharing their messages.

Discouraging signs may show themselves in the short-term, but blogging is not a threat to quality writing over the long haul.

Literature and the human condition have a relationship that began with the genre’s founding. A single work’s ability to resonate in our thoughts, inform our actions, and shape our lives is a global phenomenon intrinsically developed through the evolution of storytelling, that has been honed into an exceptional tool in the novel. As fiction pertains to the human condition, many of its finest examples explore mankind’s darkest qualities, willing readers to step farther into a darkness that plagues the psyche. The greatest questions posed by the novel demand to be answered. And once we comprehend the work’s implications, we are subsequently altered for our efforts. If you have not read the works below, consider placing them on your reading list. While unrelenting, they may change your life.

Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Yale Law Library

Set in Russia during the late 1800s during an economic and social crisis, Crime and Punishment examines the importance of morality in a climate where the law’s influences have faded. Raskolnikov, the protagonist, commits a horrific crime in the hopes of proving, to himself, his country’s laws are not applicable in a moral sense. After his heinous crime, Raskolnikov searches for redemption, which he eventually finds in Sonya, a young prostitute, who he confides in. It is a dark tale, but one with a powerful message: a man or woman cannot simply do whatever they wish without consequences. It is not a story without redemption, however. Even as Raskolnikov suffers, he finds eventual peace in confession and imprisonment.

Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad

Abhi Sharma

On the surface, it may seem merely a cruel tale. However, Heart of Darkness flourishes in its understanding of man’s many faults while exploring the horrors that accompany leadership. Marlow begins an excursion in an African jungle where he is greeted by a cast of characters who have abandoned civility in favor of survival-based methods of living. Marlow must confront Kurtz, a man who manages a dock in the jungle and inexplicably governs the nearby tribe with a ruthless, Machiavellian style of leadership. While potentially problematic due to several racist themes, Heart of Darkness unabashedly delves into the horrific nature of a man’s will to survive in the harshest physical and emotional conditions, and leaves the reader with an unnerving question: What, precisely, would you have done in the heart of darkness?

The Road, Cormac McCarthy
The most recently written novel on this list, The Road is nevertheless a captivating bridge between literature and the human condition. Set in the increasingly popular post-apocalyptic wasteland of the United States, the story follows the trials of the man and the boy, archetypal representations of a protective father and his meek, naive son. A unique study of the individual, where the man is realized as a survivor first and foremost, the man holds onto ideals of the world before, but does not utilize them. Unbeknownst to himself, the man has abandoned his country’s laws and has reverted to a more primal state. After realizing his change, the man, and the reader, try to cope with a lawless reality and an existence where the individual is truly responsible for his or her own actions.

The prevalence of the disturbed permeates in these novels, but their messages are important, and they grasp at the reasons for laws, normalcy, and the nature of the human condition. These are novels that ascend the passage of time and strike at the very notions of what it means to be human.

Michaela Jorgensen is an English teacher that writes all about the creative arts and education. Her recent work is on the Top 10 Online Colleges for aspiring teachers.

For aspiring writers, the type of writing that receives a significant amount of attention is creative writing. The most obvious reason is that creativity is an art, not a science, so people who are naturally creative stand a better chance at being successful creative writers than those who think mechanically. Be aware that there’s a format and approach to any writing, but the genius is not in the approach but in the idea created. Follow these easy tips to achieve your goal of being a fantastic creative writer.

Uncontrolled Reading
It’s said that good writers are good readers. When creative writers are being exposed to another writer’s creativity and seeing how those stories translate, they’re able to learn techniques and develop skills. Expose yourself to a variety of ideas by reading all genres and all types of stories. This includes fiction, non-fiction, and even poetry. The goal here is to expose yourself to as many different ideas as possible so you can find something you may not have thought of previously.

Scribble and Jot
Write down (or record) your thoughts and ideas in a written or audio journal to go back and review later. When you get into this habit, you’ll find that there are things that don’t make sense when you first write them down but will fit together later when you are connecting the dots.

Become A Wordsmith
A wordsmith is simply someone who knows how to use words, either in speaking or writing, though generally the context is writing. For any writer, but especially for a creative writer, the goal is to use the right words in the right order, something that is a matter of both style and personal creativity. This is one dimension of writing that cannot be taught because it is intuitive. But keep in mind that there is a discipline to using your intuition since not all good ideas translate into successful writing.

Be Creatively Honest
Everyone has witnessed a bad TV episode, movie, or theatrical play. While it’s true that sometimes the acting may be terrible, the lines that they read originate from someone who wrote them. If you have a creative idea but it’s a bad one, be honest with yourself and simply reject it and move on. Over time you’ll learn the difference between good and bad creative ideas and then be able to work with the good ideas to produce writing you’ll enjoy.

Watch a show you love and think about the writing. Find what lines you enjoy the most and listen for striking stories you may have missed otherwise. Creative writing is one piece art and another formal structure. Structure can be taught, but creativity must be allowed to grow in order to see the results you wish. Both creativity and structure need to be developed through experience. It’s unlikely that your first story will be your greatest achievement, so be patient with yourself and let the creativity flow.

Selena Marimba is a journalist who writes about all aspect of education. Her recent work is on her plans to earn an MAT degree.

The following post was written for the Massachusetts Trial Court Law Libraries blog. The personal story that is included, I feel, exemplifies what is at the heart of the Changing Lives through Literature program. The original post can be found here.

***

An alternative sentencing program has been reducing recidivism in Massachusetts for over twenty years. In 1991, UMASS-Dartmouth Literature Professor Robert Waxler, Judge Robert Kane and Probation Officer Wayne St. Pierre started the program called “Changing Lives Through Literature.” For 12 to 14 weeks, probationers, Judges and probation officers read and discuss six or seven literary works. The program ends with a graduation ceremony in a full courtroom.

At the twenty year anniversary, the Trial Court participated in a day-long symposium to assess the program’s impact. Numerous testimonials and studies proving the success of the program have been listed on the CLTL website.

“I was walking through the streets of the city the other night,” a student in Robert Waxler’s class told him once. “It could have been any city, any street, any of us. ‘And I was thinking about Santiago [ in Ernest Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea],’ he continued. ‘I came to a corner where all my old buddies hang out up the street. You know, I’ve been struggling to stay clean for a long time. But I was depressed. So I began to make the turn, to go down that street, back to the old neighborhood. Then I heard him, the old man. It was like listening to his voice. I remembered how he had gone out each day for almost three months without catching a fish. He hadn’t caught anything, but he still got up each morning, tried it again. He must have felt terrible, but he didn’t give up. So I didn’t make the turn that day. Stayed strong. Thanks to the old man. I heard him.’ “

I’ve never been one to state how others should live or choose to enjoy their lives. I’ve never found anyone who does this to truly understand anything, to be perfectly honest. My thought on the subject, and on life for that matter, is relatively simple.

Step one: Seek out what you truly enjoy doing.
Step two: Do it.

Easy, right? Now I am going to complicate things here a bit. Stay with me.

I enjoy watching TV. When I’m in a lazy mood (which is more often than I’d like to admit) I don’t believe there is anything better than sitting on my couch or lying in bed watching bad TV. I can’t fault anyone for enjoying this, either. It is easy entertainment at its most discounted price. What is missing, however, is the sense of satisfaction. After sitting and watching TV for six hours, I receive no personal satisfaction because I put in absolutely no work and received the bare minimum amount of pleasure. This is where I’ll segue to fishing, I think.

This may make sense. Again, stay with me.

Some nights, I’ll lie in bed and set my alarm for four-thirty in the morning, promising myself that I will wake up and attempt to start the old engine on the back of my boat to putter out a mile or so into the pre-dawn Atlantic and drop a few lines into the water. “It’s worth it,” I’ll tell myself. “Just wake up and make yourself do it. It’s that easy.”

But it’s not easy. It takes effort.

In my half-asleep state, I feel that fateful time on my iPhone alarm clock ticking nearer and nearer until it’s ringing loudly into my ears. I open my eyes and squint into the darkness and stillness of the morning. “I could just go back to sleep. I don’t have to get up. I don’t want to get up,” I tell myself. And sometimes, I don’t. But on some mornings, I work up enough strength to kick the covers off my feet and stand up out of bed. In a sleep-deprived haze, I walk across the wet grass in the moonless darkness and start my car.

When I get to the harbor, I still don’t see the moon or anyone on the street or even hear anyone on the radio. I get out of my car and re-stretch my legs. I take two, sometimes three trips to the dock and load all of my gear into the little leaky dingy and row feebly out to my 18-foot center console at the far edge of the harbor next to the white water lapping on the mossy breakwater boulders in the flood tide.

I start my engine once, putters, blows a plume of smoke, stalls out. I start it again; same thing but a bigger plume of smoke. On the third attempt, the engine shakes and rumbles and decides to stay running long enough for me to shift into gear. Finally, I’m off.

A few meandering gulls sleepwalk awkwardly out of the way of the fiberglass hull of my boat, parting the water, just barely showing the first glimpses of sunlight from the false dawn rising atop the dunes of the beach and the roofs of the beach houses.

As I near my supposed destination, I slow my little boat to a saunter just as the first glimpse of the sun shows its face. Then, I cut the engine; silence, but for a noisy tern circling, watching me, wondering what I’m doing. I prepare my rods and wait, either five minutes, an hour, three hours, all day…

For that moment, as I lean on the gunnels, rocking softly against the direction-less waves, hearing the water gurgle as it rises and falls through the scuppers, I’m happy that I woke up and dragged myself out of bed and trusted my old engine to get me to where I wanted to go. “I can’t believe I almost didn’t do this,” I think to myself. “I can’t believe I almost traded in this satisfaction of actually accomplishing something for a warm bed and a few cheap television shows.” The satisfaction of working hard to truly accomplish or understand something is more fulfilling than any creature comfort. I may even catch a fish.

When I find myself in the last few pages of a book, truly caring, understanding, feeling for characters that are completely fictionalized by some man or woman I don’t and will never know, I am granted this same, deep sense of satisfaction and self-awareness. I am grateful that I can feel this way, that if I invest enough work—be it physical or emotional—into what I’m doing, I can feel this way. For this reason, I am excited to become more involved in the Changing Lives through Literature program and blog. I feel that everyone should be able to experience this sense of satisfaction. I know that literature has the power to change and better even the most beat-down and hardened lives and I am ecstatic that I will be given the opportunity to witness and experience this first-hand.

I apologize for the lengthy preface to this introductory blog. So, let’s see. Let me start with some facts in no particular order.

My name is Billy Mitchell and I have never run a blog before.
I have a list of books I mean to read turning over in my mind that spans the number of books I have ever read and will probably ever read in my lifetime.
I enjoy beer and I enjoy a good book and a combination of the two could keep me satisfied forever.
My favorite author is very cliché, as is my favorite book, so I won’t get into that.
I read The Sun Also Rises in high school and thought to myself, “Wow what a happy book, I would love to be one of these characters.” I read it again a few years later and was shocked at how I could have been so naïve.
I was once assigned Tolstoy’s War and Peace to readfor a class. I read and enjoyed the whole massive thing up until the last chapter where I stopped, and haven’t picked it up since. I’m not sure why I did that.
When I finish a book, I find myself dreaming about the characters more so than I do about real-life people. Sometimes I like to believe that the characters are real-life people, and convince myself so.
I still haven’t met Dean, or anyone who is mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved.
I’m still beating on, boat against the current, borne back ceaselessly.
I tend to write like Hemingway when I’m drinking scotch, which is almost never, but I can wish, can’t I?
I’m not quite sure if this is the best of times or the worst of times, but I feel it’s somewhere in the middle and I can’t hate that prospect.
I’m no Ishmael and you can’t call me that.
I’m still not sure where my white whale is; I can’t remember the last time I saw him.
I hope to never go 84 days without a fish.
I enjoy fishing and the metaphorical symbolism that comes with it, and I feel it is the closest resemblance that anyone can experience to reading and understanding a truly great book.
Hemingway said “there is no friend as loyal as a good book.” I would tend to agree, unless you have a really great dog. But I hear Hemingway was a cat guy.

So, readers of the Changing Lives, Changing Minds blog, I’ll leave you with this. Reading is like fishing, or something like that. In my heart, I recognize the ability of a good piece of literature to change the way that a person thinks about and perceives the world around them. And I think this is important for everyone to realize. No, I know it’s important. So never stop waking up early and putting in the work. Never let the temptation of what is easy or accessible or cheap overcome your need for your own personal satisfaction. I guess what I am trying to say, is this: Never stop fishing.

Let Hamlet Transform You

In this video, J.C. Wallace portrays the complex role of Hamlet. “To be, or not to be” is one of the best-known lines in English literature. Wallace gives a superb performance of Hamlet’s greatest soliloquy.

This video was produced by JoAnne Breault, Director of Communication for Changing Lives Through Literature (CLTL). Breault oversees CLTL’s Literature Transforms You campaign which promotes reading literature as a way to enhance lives. CLTL is based at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and was founded by Dr. Robert Waxler and Judge Robert Kane as an alternative sentencing program.